Sunday night, Chargers and Raiders fans get an opportunity to find out how the East Coast watches football.

For a change, we're the ones who have to stay up until midnight to watch the home team.

With the A's hosting Detroit on Friday and Saturday nights in Oakland in the American League Division Series, and the Chargers and Raiders scheduled to play Sunday at 1 p.m. in the same building, something had to give.

The coliseum in Oakland is the last of the two-sport, outdoor venues, and it takes about 18 hours to convert it from baseball to football.

The A's are scheduled to start at 6:37 p.m. Saturday. Add 18 hours to the finish of that game, and the Chargers-Raiders game will kickoff at 8:35 p.m. Sunday.

The alternative was for the Chargers and Raiders to flip-flop home games ... playing in San Diego thisSunday and in Oakland on Dec. 22. That idea didn't work for anyone.

The Chargers and Raiders were scheduled to play on CBS. But the late-night start and prime-time shows on CBS have pushed the game to the NFL Network, which only about 60 percent of viewers in San Diego get.

So the NFL put the game up for bid. For about $50,000, stations in San Diego and Oakland could add it to the schedule.

Fox was in the running in San Diego as was KUSI. Ultimately, KFMB - Channel 8 and the CBS affiliate in San Diego - secured the contest.

That means San Diego viewers miss the CBS Sunday prime-time shows "The Amazing Race", "The Good Wife" and "The Mentalist."

"The network allows it's affiliates a certain number of prime-time exceptions," said Pat Nevin, general manager of the KFMB stations. "We had to get network approval to do this. We'll have those prime-time shows starting at midnight and viewers can also watch them On-demand.

"But we felt we had to have the Chargers on our air."

Chargers game average about a 50 share of the audience in San Diego, meaning at least half the TV sets in the county are tuned to the Chargers on a given game day.

"Outside of the Super Bowl, there is no bigger ratings draw in San Diego than a Chargers game," Nevin said.

San Diego gets three NFL games Sunday on Channel 8: Chiefs-Titans at 10 a.m., Broncos-Cowboys at 1:25 p.m. and the Chargers at 8:35.

The Broncos-Cowboys should be a great lead-in the CBS postgame show and local news. At 6 p.m., KFMB goes to network news, and at 7 p.m. it's "60 Minutes."

That's followed by 30 more minutes of local news, the Chargers game and postgame show.

"This is the first time we'll have three NFL games on our air," Nevin said. "This is a huge win for us.

"It will likely do the biggest ratings in the history of the station.

"I can't tell you how happy I am this worked out."

More Chargers

The regular CBS production crew will work Sunday's game for the NFL Network.

In Oakland, the game will air on KRON MyNetwork TV, a network owned by Fox.

Local notes

Ratings for Padres games on Fox Sports San Diego were up 30 percent this season from 1.89 in 2012 to 2.42. That equates to a little more than 26,000 households per game. In addition, FSSD finished the season with a sold out commercial inventory.

Carter Blackburn and Danny Kanell call Friday's Nevada-San Diego State football game. Allison Williams works the sidelines. Kickoff is 6 p.m. on ESPN.

College football

There are 27 games on TV Saturday with 13 involving Top-25 teams. Three of those games pit two Top-25 teams against each other - No. 25 Maryland at No. 8 Florida State (9 a.m., ESPN), No. 4 Ohio State at No. 16 Northwestern (5 p.m., ABC) and No. 15 Washington at No. 5 Stanford (7:30 p.m., ESPN).

Ratings game

Sunday night's Patriots-Falcons game on NBC did a 12.5 rating with 20.5-million viewers. In Boston, the rating number was 36 while in Atlanta it was 27.2. San Diego ranked seventh in the nation with a 1.6.

Monday night's Saints-Dolphins game on ESPN did an 8.6 rating with 13.7-million viewers. New Orleans posted an amazing 61.0 rating while Miami checked in at 17.1. San Diego ranked No. 3 in the nation with a 14.0.